Break notice // Chapter 538 - Heartseekers

Author note:

TLDR: No chapters from sept 26 to oct 6

Hi! I always hate to announce that I'm taking time off, but this couldn't be avoided. Book 3 should've been out on amazon since august and... It's still far from ready... I need time away from writing to focus on rounding up the editing, so I'm taking a bit more than a week off this time, and hopefully I can be done in advance and actually take one or two rest days during that 'break' instead of coming back even more tired than I already am...

So yeah, only three chapters next week, then I'll be back on a Monday, October 7th.

While I could always push back the amazon release, I have a contract with the audiobook publisher now, so I can't keep being so late.

Related news: One of the chapters the week I come back will be the long-promised Cinthia + Sofia + Astelia Q&A chapter, more details on that on next Wednesday's chapter.

With that being said, and before you go on to today's chapter, here's the finalized version of book 3's cover art. (As I said before, the one I posted last time was a WIP, but I know some of you guys don't read what I write...)

Before her head could fly far from her body, Sofia extended her upper cervical bones into a spike that stabbed into her neck, and promptly reconnected the bones of her spine and her armor, reattaching her head.

When a follow-up strike came right after from the opposite direction, she was already expecting it and managed to place her shield correctly in the way. The blade dug into the bone but stopped before it could reach the shield’s mithril core, and the swordsman pulled his blade back before Sofia could riposte in any way, jumping back into the flames.

Fast, but not that strong.

Since it looked like the fire was useless and obscured Sofia’s vision more than anything, she unsummoned the choir, and started channeling a piercing bolt over her scepter instead. Knowing that she was the lesser swordsman and with lackluster speed, she decisively summoned a mana pearl from her storage and threw it in her mouth before the enemy attacked again. The thinking speed bonus the pearls from [Crystalized] was going to be precious here to be able to even perceive the enemy’s attacks, Sofia thought. With her preparations ready, she jumped to the offensive, switching to the Chaos state of [Dodge - me] for the bonus speed.

Another sweeping horizontal sword strike came for Sofia’s neck from the right, and this time, she was able to properly react and block with the scale armguard. These moments where she blocked the swordsman’s strikes were the only times she could clearly see him, and she used that opportunity to strike with the bolt, using it as a longsword.

As she used her blocking arm to attack, the sword was free to go for her head, but she could just heal that up a second time if she had to, yet instead, the sword phased through her arm to block it from the other side preventing the blot from reaching its target and locking the two fighters in a standstill for an instant. With the bolt as her weapon and her ability to reconnect lost limbs in an instant, the power dynamic had switched to the swordsman being the one on the defensive.

Sofia and Rekosi locked eyes. Sofia knew she was stronger and could break out of the standstill but with how fast the zombie was, she thought he was likely to dodge anyway, so she instead sent a sneaky burst of mana toward the swordsman.

Rekosi pulled away before the mana could reach him, jumping to the other side of the room.

Very perceptive for a zombie.

Sofia dashed after him. Sending more packets of [Aberrant sunlight]’s cursed mana around him leaving the Zombie no choice other than blocking her again or getting hit by the curse as he tried to avoid her.

Rekosi stood his ground and blocked with the edge of his blade, his sword clashing against the lightning-coated scepter, creating an explosion of sparks and lightning shooting out toward the many swords sticking out of the room’s walls. Some of the lightning touched the zombie, leaving burn marks that faded almost as fast as they had appeared on his gray skin. 

In a standstill like before, Sofia this time attacked with the edge of her large bone shield, and the swordsman disappeared before it could reach him.

He reappeared behind Sofia, striking down with a vertical cut, but Sofia’s 360° demon vision meant that she had never lost track of him, and was able to block with her tail before using her scepter to strike the swordsman behind her.

Yet, somehow, as if the zombie’s sword was at two places at once, it blocked the scepter while also being caught on the tail, and Rekosi jumped back another time, taking more distance from Sofia.

Sofia turned around with a jump.

“What’s wrong? The longer you keep trying to escape the stronger my spell is going to be,” Sofia taunted the zombie, raising her scepter with the ever-growing bolt pulsating around it, being fed thirty thousand mana every second.

Seeing Sofia wide open, the Zombie took the bait and attacked, moving in a strange arc before his sword plunged deep directly into the center of Sofia’s chest, where her mana heart was.

But how could he have known that with her ultimate rank mana heart and [Relocate Core], it was able to avoid attacks by itself? Sofia’s mana heart had softly moved to the side inside of her, as if gliding along the swordsman’s blade.

Using this opportunity where the swordsman was committed to a strike, Sofia released the piercing bolt from her scepter from the bottom, aimed at the swordsman’s waist. Releasing a bolt backwards was not something she had ever used, but she knew it was an option for the piercing ones, as its mana structure was almost symmetrical from the center of her scepter.

The bolt hit, leaving a bleeding hole through the zombie, but the zombie also had a trick up his sleeves, a second sword appearing out of nowhere in his left hand and sweeping off Sofia’s ankles. He then tried to free his first sword by cutting down through Sofia’s chest, only to find his sword stuck in place. He could not transition his pierce into a cut because of [Singularity Edict].

Despite her ankles being sliced off Sofia did not fall, holding herself up with her tail pressed against the ground.

With so many things happening at once, the swordsman was deeply committed to his attacks, and took an [Aberrant Sunlight] cursed mana blast straight to the face without being able to do anything about it.

As swordsman Rekosi’s head uncontrollably turned to look at the swinging lanterns hanging from the roof, he did something Sofia did not predict and swiftly cut off his own head as he jumped away from her once more, leaving one sword in her chest.

That’s one way to escape the curse…

Both the bolt hole in Rekosi’s waist and his lost head were quickly healing while spraying blood everywhere, and his rotten skin and muscles would be fully grown back in a matter of seconds. Even without a head, he held his guard up in a perfect martial stance, ready to block any incoming attack.

Sofia’s ankles were reconnected, but the muscles were still sliced off, limiting her movement, so she decided to let him heal as she instead focused on getting as many bone slates out of her bone storage as she could. She stacked them up around her and controlled them to spread them around the arena.

Rekosi’s head fully grew back, and after switching the sword to his main hand, he went on the offensive again. Sofia felt the sword strike incoming from the left, while seeing it coming from the right, faced with this conflicting information, she abruptly flew up, crashing against the blades covering the ceiling but successfully avoiding the attack. More and more bones were unloaded from her storage as she did so, tumbling into the room and getting covered in Rekosi’s shed blood.

From this point on, she no longer used mana, keeping her distance with Rekosi, she let him chase her while she flew around the room in tight maneuvers while she unloaded more and more bones.

The swordsman had no long-distance attacks, it seemed, and could only try to jump and intercept her mid-air with upward strikes. His speed meant that he succeeded at that a few times, but Sofia was entirely fine with losing a few chunks of her body, she could not bleed out anyway.

Rekosi eventually gave a decisive strike and cut off Sofia’s left wing. That did nothing, as Sofia’s bloodlight now extended to encompass her wings when they were there. She did not actually need the bones to fly. Eventually, there were piles of bones spread around the entire room, and Sofia stopped flying around. She stored her scepter and landed on the largest pile of bones.

“You’ve lost,” Sofia told the Zombie who prepared to strike again. The swordsman struck, slicing Sofia into two halves from the head down. Victory’s crown snapped back into a single piece as Sofia’s body split apart.

Since the swordsman had to come close to strike with his sword, he was in the close range where Sofia had complete and precise control of all the linked bones she touched. Bones slithered up the swordsman's legs while Sofia’s spine wrapped around his sword, locking him in place. A coffin of bones rapidly formed over him as the entire pile of bone was attracted to him like iron dust to a magnet.

Fully encased in bones, Sofia turned Swordsman Rekosi into rotten meat paste until she found his mana heart, which was quite well-hidden, as it itself contained very little mana.

The bone armor holding Sofia’s separated halves together, she stood up, puppeteering herself like she had learned to do during the last trial. A hole opened in the swordsman’s bone tomb for Sofia to plunge her hand through. Her armored fingers closed around the Zombie’s mana heart, and she pulled.

‘You have murdered [Rekosi Lengstone - ERR:NOCLASS Lv. 299]’